The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee made their visit on the 11th February taking a tour of the area with visits to the Tree Barn at Greenfield and the Hundred Hills Vineyard at Pishill prior to the official evidence session at Russell’s Water Village Hall where there was a full house to hear the witness evidence

The visit started with an informal reception hosted by Connect8’s William Perrin at the Barn at Britwell Hill Farm. This gave the four MP’s the chance to meet a large number of our Connect8 supporters informally and to hear their personal accounts of the quest for an acceptable broadband service – our guests included local councillors and Commander Rory Freeman of Thames Valley Police who was able to witness the strategic importance of the masts on Britwell Hill in kicking off the radio solution outlined in the proposals being put forward by Village Networks.

The visits to the Tree Barn and the Hundred Hills Vineyard gave the CMS MP’s a perfect demonstration of the problems faced by these rural business ventures through a lack of super fast broadband and with no firm indication of when BT will finally deliver the promised connectivity.

Loved the fact they struggled to get a feed! As someone in an identical situation I went down the Satellite route 2.5 years ago.

Awful, awful, awful. £75 a month for allegedly 20Mbps down and 6Mbps up and a 50Gb download limit/month. Never that speed unless in the middle of the night and the chances of ever downloading 50Gb are remote.

I have been up a ladder 20ft in the air to replace the Tria (£75 – my cost) x1 and reconnect the cable x3.

I am reasonably fit but God knows how the elderly or infirm rural resident would cope.

Currently awaiting inclusion in Phase 3 of BDUK (apparently) for Staffordshire.